Press Releases

New UNECE/FAO Team of Specialists will strengthen transboundary boreal forest efforts

Published: 05 November 2019

The boreal forest that circles the globe doesn’t make it to the news as often as the Amazon rainforest. However, it contains a third of all the trees on earth and in combination with its soil forms the largest storage of CO2, while refreshing the entire planet’s atmosphere with the oxygen it produces. In addition, forest-based products derived from sustainably managed boreal forests offer an alternative to more carbon-intensive materials such as plastics, concrete or steel. Boreal forests are therefore a crucial ally, if we are to mitigate climate change and meet the goal of maintaining the projected global temperature increase to below 2°C.

However, in recent years boreal forests have come under attack. While boreal forests are largely untouched by direct human influence, they have been dramatically affected by anthropogenic climate change. Rising temperatures warm up the boreal forests’ permafrost soil, thus threatening to release the CO2 it had previously stored. Moreover, warmer temperatures can enable insects to thrive leading to beetle infestations. Finally, heatwave-related fires have drastically diminished the boreal forests’ size. Once the forests’ peat and turf soils are burning, it is impossible to control the fire as it spreads underneath the forest soil. Ironically, our boreal allies in the fight against climate change are destroyed by the effects of the very development they are meant to mitigate.

In light of the challenges and opportunities linked to boreal forests, ministers from the circumboreal countries, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, signed the Haparanda Ministerial Declaration on Circumboreal Cooperation on Forests in June 2018. In the declaration countries vowed to increase research cooperation and knowledge-sharing on boreal forests.